Choices
by nattieb
Summary: “I made my choice a long time ago” – Rose’s thoughts after Doomsday on why she would always keep trying and hoping to find a way back to the Doctor. Written for the 'Hope Springs Eternal' Challenge on LJ.


Author's Note: Here it is my first Who fic. Special thanks to heather916 who talked me into doing this, then served as a sounding board for weeks. She also found the missing piece of this story and it is thanks to her that it turned out the way it did. Also a huge thanks to angelbev21 for her encouragement and kind words. Both you ladies made me believe so thank you.

Choices

Choices. People make them everyday. Coffee or tea? Ham or beef? Left or right? Our lives are seeped in choices. Some are easy, while others tear at our souls.

I've watched the choices of others plunge them into despair or elevate them to the highest heights. I've seen choices having varying ramifications on individuals, couples, families, neighborhoods, cities, countries, worlds. I've watched as everyday ordinary citizens stand up and make a choice to say no. I've seen choices change, destroy, support, and strengthen.

But what happens to a person when their choice is ripped from them? What happens when one's choices are no longer an option? Some move on, choosing a new path. Others wallow in despair, letting go of the choice but never making another. While others cling to that choice, trying everything to breathe life into it's battered shell, hoping one day to make it a reality.

Five years ago I made a choice. I chose to leave the safety and comfort of home for the unknown. I chose him.

Many doubted and questioned my choice. My mother fought me at every turn, Mickey sulked and tried to convince me I was wrong. They didn't understand the pull of the man in the leather jacket and his blue box - the lure of time and space at one's fingertips.

I tried to tell them - tried to make them see that my choice was making me a better person. I wasn't giving myself airs or turning into someone my mother wouldn't recognize. No, he was teaching me to be the person I was always meant to be. It was his hand I chose to hold. His voice I chose to follow. His life I chose to lead. In choosing him, I found myself.

I tried to show him everyday that this was my choice. That the life we led was what I wanted. That I would never stop running, never stop dancing, never stop believing. That I would never leave him, never give up, never stop. He tried to take that choice away from me, thinking the life I had left was better for me. For a few agonizing hours, I hated that he had taken away my choice, that he had belittled that decision, that he thought he knew what was better for me.

I had to prove to him that it was my choice, not his.

At times my choice lead to heartbreak. I watched others enter and leave our lives. I watched as he left me for another and she left an imprint on his hearts that I believed I never could. But I had made my choice and I wasn't going back.

My choice also brought so much joy. Each new adventure, each lesson, each smile, each hug, each time he took my hand, reaffirmed that I had made the right choice.

In the back of my mind I always knew he would try to take the choice out of my hands again. I knew it would be up to me to prove forever was my choice. I fought those that would pull us apart. I struggled against those who would divide us. I never stopped believing in my choice. I never stopped believing in him.

The last time he questioned this choice I proved to him that I was willing to sacrifice everything. I had made him a promise. I had made my choice and nothing, not even the love and safety of a childhood dream, was going to change my mind.

In the end, choice didn't matter.

It was weeks later, pulled away from everything I had known and fought for…everything that I loved… when I realized what my choice had cost. We were now both alone, with only the memory of two minutes to cling to, to find hope in what was said, and what was not.

I looked at things so differently after that day, the one spark of hope I had left was extinguished. Every hand in mine felt wrong. Every decision now felt like a betrayal. This hadn't been my choice, it hadn't even been his. Choice had been ripped out of my hands and now a far greater choice now loomed over me pushing me to make a decision.

For months I struggled. I was torn between the choice I had clung to for so long and the new choice which my heart would not let me take, the fantastic life he had begged for me to have. Others tried to advise me, to remind me of what he had wanted. They tried to give me the security I had longed for as a child - the security I had found in someone else. They tried to give me the comfort I desperately craved but they were not the ones I looked for. They were not the hands I ached to hold or the arms I dreamed to fall into. Love wouldn't let me say goodbye.

I had chosen forever, and I meant it. But times change, and Mum, Dad, and Mickey were right and I couldn't pretend anymore. Two minutes on a beach in Norway had taught me that. I can't simply imagine away my current circumstances. They are real. They are tangible. I live that life now, the one he wanted for me, but my choice is still there: a beacon to me across the vast space of the void.

But, I am always looking, always watching. No matter the circumstances I can't turn around and walk away now; I won't give up my choice without a fight. Not now, not after all this time, because my choice, my love, won't let me.

So I keep fighting, I keep hoping, I keep believing. Because no matter how hard it is or how impossible it may seem now, I made my choice a long time ago. Him.


End file.
